Newly Discovered Form Of Light That May Alter The Foundations Of Physics
Light, the very essence of life has been the topic of many a debate for a very long time. One may recall about the well documented argument between Newton and Huygens, arising from their apparently conflicting views concerning the nature of light. While Isaac Newton was keen to push his corpuscular theory, Huygens asserted the wave nature.
With the advancement of quantum mechanics, we now know that both of them were actually right in their own way. Light can behave both as a particle and as a wave, depending on the phenomenon being studied. By means of De Broglie’s bold hypothesis, we learnt that not only light but everything in this universe has this unique property, now known as the wave particle duality.
One of the primary quantities associated with a beam of light is the angular momentum, which until now had always been found to be quantised as an integral multiple of the Planck’s constant. Recently physicists hailing from the Trinity College Dublin’s School of Physics and the CRANN institute, have clinching evidence suggesting a deviation from the known physics. They have demonstrated a new form of light, where the angular momentum of each photon (the quanta of light) is precisely half the expected value.
According to the experts, this unconventional behaviour might change the course of physics, as the quantization of angular momentum has profound implications in the foundations of modern physics. Professor Stefano Sanvito, Director at CRANN, proclaimed that this was indeed a breakthrough discovery. The team employed a phenomenon, that was perhaps ironically first discovered at this very institution almost two centuries ago. In the year 1830, mathematician William Rowan Hamilton and physicist Humphrey Lloyd had proposed that a light beam when passing through some specific crystal, starts to act as a hollow cylinder.
The group used the aforementioned property to devise light beams having a screw like appearance. Initially the researchers used the principles of quantum mechanics to theoretically predict that the angular momentum of a photon would be half-integer.
After a crucial analysis using a specially customized instrument, the team confirmed that the angular momentum of each photon had indeed shifted by an incredibly small amount, equalling half the Planck’s constant. According to the team, this discovery has potential to alter the behaviour of light and have applications in the fields of optical communication and nanophotonics. The complete research has been published in the ‘Science Advances’
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With the advancement of quantum mechanics, we now know that both of them were actually right in their own way. Light can behave both as a particle and as a wave, depending on the phenomenon being studied. By means of De Broglie’s bold hypothesis, we learnt that not only light but everything in this universe has this unique property, now known as the wave particle duality.
One of the primary quantities associated with a beam of light is the angular momentum, which until now had always been found to be quantised as an integral multiple of the Planck’s constant. Recently physicists hailing from the Trinity College Dublin’s School of Physics and the CRANN institute, have clinching evidence suggesting a deviation from the known physics. They have demonstrated a new form of light, where the angular momentum of each photon (the quanta of light) is precisely half the expected value.
According to the experts, this unconventional behaviour might change the course of physics, as the quantization of angular momentum has profound implications in the foundations of modern physics. Professor Stefano Sanvito, Director at CRANN, proclaimed that this was indeed a breakthrough discovery. The team employed a phenomenon, that was perhaps ironically first discovered at this very institution almost two centuries ago. In the year 1830, mathematician William Rowan Hamilton and physicist Humphrey Lloyd had proposed that a light beam when passing through some specific crystal, starts to act as a hollow cylinder.
The group used the aforementioned property to devise light beams having a screw like appearance. Initially the researchers used the principles of quantum mechanics to theoretically predict that the angular momentum of a photon would be half-integer.
After a crucial analysis using a specially customized instrument, the team confirmed that the angular momentum of each photon had indeed shifted by an incredibly small amount, equalling half the Planck’s constant. According to the team, this discovery has potential to alter the behaviour of light and have applications in the fields of optical communication and nanophotonics. The complete research has been published in the ‘Science Advances’
Source: #-Link-Snipped-#
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